War With Iran Closer?

General William Fallon, who until this week was the most recent head of CentCom and the atrocity that is Iraq, has been referred to many times as perhaps the only person standing in the way of Bush-Cheney's nightmare folly of war with Iran.

Now Fallon has been effectively forced out.

I dunno. Scott Ritter predicted an April 2008 all-out war, us vs. Iran. Fallon's departure makes me damned scared this IS it. (Bush has pushed out countless people who dared suggest his plans were bad.)

Anyone else concerned?

The Truth Serum Version of Bush's State of the Union Speech Tonight

[Mind you, I don't think truth serum ever was - or is today - Bush's drug of choice ("Want a little noseful more cocaine coke with that whiskey, George?"]

Considering Bush has been known – mature, wise fellow that he is – to flip the finger at press and photographers, a part of me wonders if, on the occasion of his final State of the Union delivery tonight (Monday), he might just tell the truth, certain that no one can do a damned thing about all the misery, injustice, and death he has wrought. God knows the man looks for opportunities to smirk ever more insultingly.

So here's what I think he would say if truth serum were administered to him just before the speech:

Good evening, you pussies and ingrates:I could give you my usual bullshit about how I gotta hard job and I work hard (damned, I say that a heluva lot) but we all know if damned good 'o me to bother to put in eight hours a WEEK between my naps, ball game watching, riding my mountain bikes OVER old ladies, and planning for the vacations I take ev'ry few days.

But anyways... I won't make this long 'cos you don't wanna hear it and frankly, I like to pretend to get into bed real early like so I can hide my drinkin' and druggin' I'd make certain you'd do federal time for. So let's get this sucker over with.

Too effin' bad if you don't like the job I've done; it was never up to you anyway. And mixed in with all the lies was a little truth, anyway. Like when I said I wanted to make America an ownership society – not my fault if you thought YOU would be the owners when I really meant Saudi nationals, wealthy Kuwaitis, and scores of other rich for'ners would come in and buy everythin' up 'cos I made sure you can't afford to breathe.

As for Iraq, boo-frickin-hoo so many have died. At least they're not people I care about. My dumb-as-dirt daughters are just fine and livin' like princesses so I don't give a tinker's damn that your kid is too dumb to get into college 'cos I dumbed down the requirements for public education or 'cos I made sure they can't afford to go on to school. After all, we gotta military recruitment quota to fill and it's not like there are jobs out there for your grown kids to get; and where they can find jobs, I'll make damned well sure they are jobs that can feed a family.

Also, college ain't all its cracked up to be. Just look at me and I went to a bunch of the best effing schools in the country.

Besides, what I got planned for Iran makes Iraq look like a bleepin' Irish wedding by comparison, so I'll need your kids out on the front line with no body armor and few bullets, and not sittin' in some classroom learning liberal crap like Darwinism and math. Don't be thinkin' you can stop me from going to war in Iran either - look at all the shit you've let me get away with!

What'cha gonna do? Impeach me? Muhahahahahahahahaha.

No matter what anybody tells ya, the economy's just FINE. Know how I know that? Cos all my fat cat friends and family are a heluva lot richer now than they were when I first came into office. And if you're a lot poorer because of it, don't look at me. I can't understand how poor people think, like I've said before. And you ought'a see how rich I'll be from sweetheart deals – not to mention my huge tax breaks – once I leave office.

You're gonna be supportin' me and mine for the rest of our effing lives – and trust me, we got a MUCH bigger standard of living than you.

And to those who say I do nothin' but lie, so? It's not like the media cares enough to point 'em out. And if you're watching MY favorite NEWS Network, The Cartoon Network uh.. Fox, then you're too damned stupid to notice my lies any ole way.

In closing, let me tell you something my mama, Bitching Barb, always told us kids: “If you're gonna get screwed, you might as well close your eyes, lie back, pretend to enjoy it, and then charge 'em triple for the honor.”

Now get the F outta here so I can toke. The White House ain't the people's house anymore.. It's MINE, beatch, and I want you GONE. ::insert extra smirk here::

President Bush: "(The Devil) Saddam Made Me Do It (Iraq)"

Well, we've heard every possible excuse from the president and the rest of the Bush Administration on how they could have been so terribly wrong about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the threat the Iraqi leaders presented to the U.S. So now, after a government audit documented 935 separate lies about Iraq - and the American economy affected by a war with Iraq - from the Bush Administration, what makes more sense than for the Bushies to turn around and blame Saddam? Well, that is, it makes about as much sense as anything else this murderous, greedy, deceitful crew does, anyway.

What marvelous timing that the FBI agent who supposedly was the one to interrogate Saddam Hussein after his capture in Iraq in December 2003 picked NOW, in light of the lie report, to disclose highlights from his seven-month-long interrogation of the Iraqi dictator, hanged just before the end of 2006.

However, for the Bushies to quickly spread the story that it was Saddam who lied and fooled them does NOT appear to be a particularly flattering spin on events. For it to matter, we would have had to BELIEVE what Saddam was saying in the first place - and we had no reason to do that, did we? After all, we expect our enemies - and America's greatest enemy of all, President George W. Bush - to lie to us. So why did the Bushies magically choose to believe the WMD/threat lies (if Saddam told them rather than the U.S.)?

Also, according to Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney, et al, they had "military intelligence" and well more than ample evidence from "trusted sources" that WMD was EVERYWHERE in Iraq and that the nation, which could barely afford to operate at all, was ready to launch suicide camel rocket SCUBA divers to blow up the West Coast (remember?).

Well, as usual with the Bushies, the truth changes faster than Bush's "reasons" for going into Iraq in the first place, and none of the stories/versions makes as much sense as that we went in there for the oil, and got a lot more (and not in a good way) than we bargained for.

Why can't the Bushies do something truly unique just ONCE? As in, tell the truth? Wait. I know why. Because to them, the truth is just something to spin into something worse. Lessons we need to keep in mind as Bush keeps ramping us forward to war with Iran.

U.S. Officials Sell Nuclear Secrets to Israel, Turkey

It never ends with this "moral" crew, does it? From Raw Story (and mind you, Bushies happily slip two countries "not supposed to have" nukes such secrets, while everytime a doctor in Iran orders a chest x-ray, Bush claims Ahmadinejad's about to nuke The Mickey Mouse Club, Chucky Cheese, and other vital symbols of American uh... brilliance, superiority, and patriotism). Want to bet NONE of these officials is charged, much less convicted, of treason - which is WHAT this act would mean to anyone else.

The Sunday Times has obtained a document that confirms that a file, which the FBI denied existed, could contain information about American officials stealing nuclear secrets for Turkish and Israeli spies, who would then sell the secrets to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Earlier, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, 37, approached the Times about "explosive" communications she discovered between high-up American officials and Turkish and Israeli spies. A FOIA request to the FBI, for case number 203A-WF-210023, was answered with a claim that the case number did not exist.

"I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002," says Edmonds.

One high-ranking official, identified by RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna as Marc Grossman, Ambassador to Turkey from 1994 to 1997. Grossman is said to have warned his cohorts not to do business with Brewster Jennings, a front company set up by the CIA. Brewster Jennings was also the "employer" of CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose cover, with Grossman's help, was blown in what is widely believed to be a political hit job by the Bush Administration on her husband, Ambassador and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson.

The entire Sunday Times article can be read HERE.

Strange that, if completely accurate, American media ignores the story while a paper most Americans have never heard of, much less read reports on it.

Is treason no longer a punishable offense? Only, under Bush, could THAT happen. And the GOP crew angling for his job sure won't guard "the flame" any better. Some, quite terrifyingly, could be much worse.

Strait of Hormuz Spinning 101

For those who want a roundup of how BADLY the Bushies tried to spin the story of two little speedboats somehow presenting a MASSIVE THREAT to two big ass U.S. warships (who perhaps do NOT themselves belong in the fucking Strait of Hormuz in the first place) in Bush's latest attempt to launch war with Iran, see Cernig's (excellent) Newshoggers.

Myself? I laughed at the incident once I saw the video (wow, was that dumb) but laughed less when CNN's poll yesterday said that 44% of Americans agreed that Bush is right about Iran being "such a threat". However, CNN's damned poll is also REALLY easy to vote multiple times in, so it could be Karl Rove with an hour on his pudgy, murderous hands changing the vote (not exactly the first time he's done that, is it?).

New Hampshire Republicans (And Others): Watch Bush and Iran Today

With the events in the Straits of Hormuz today, with Bush rattling his sabers ever louder for an action from Iranian boats that, since we declared the War on of Terror, American forces commit EVERY DAY in the waters of other lands where we often have no right or permission to threaten, I advise you to rethink carefully your primary vote today.

McCain isn't all that far from Bush, while Huckabee, Giuliani, Romney, et al, are determined to continue Bush policies that have bankrupted this land and made us far more, rather than less, hated in the world. And if you think Iraq is a mess, imagine what a war with Iran will bring us.

We won't ever "control" 1.5 (and growing) billion Muslims. But we can influence them BADLY against us. And the Bush-Republican way is to do that.

I happened to hear on WGN today a speech given by a Holocaust survivor today at a Chicago area school. This man, who lost so much, talked so passionately about how wars are always started for so-called noble purposes, but that with it, so many (and usually, so many of them innocents) die, and that the way forward is to STOP the wars.

I second him. We don't need a holocaust for Muslims, and we don't want to bring one down (through our own actions) on Christians (or at least, leaders who CALL themselves Christian).

Ready For $4/Gallon Gas Prices in February?

Well, at least Bush and Cheney and Blackwater execs and the bastards who benefited most from the subprime mortgage crisis can afford to fill up the tanks of their Humvees. The rest of us? Maybe not so much.

After crude oil prices surpassed their previous record high at above $100/barrel, pushed in part by the assassination of Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and even moreso by the worsening situation and escalating violence in Nigeria, some experts predict that, rather than see "at the pump" prices begin to moderate out again (they actually fell to below $3/gallon in some places - NOT Vermont, but some places), we may very well see $4 per gallon prices before Valentine's Day.

And if Bush further steps up his violent rhetoric toward Iran, we might see them climb higher still.

Obviously, we're not just hurting at the gas pumps. The Bushies further cut funding for energy assistance for money-strapped Americans needing help to pay astronomically high fuel prices.

Iran: The Bushies' Deadliest Game Ever

I talk with many progressive, moderate and increasingly, well right of center Republicans who these days not just readily admit but rant and rave themselves that the Bush Administration's logic on almost everything it does is so very bad as to be criminal (meaning: OK, we gave him the benefit of the doubt for a long time, but you can't fuck this much up without a PLAN!). On Iran, even some of the neocon fans, however, are reeling from this administration's latest approach.

The IAEA studied Iran's capabilities for some time and said that Iran is not ready to do any real damage with nuclear power to anyone (even Israel, which is often the greatest fear though Israel's got MUCH bigger ones and a penchant to use their weaponry with some abandon). Major U.S. intel on Iran determined Iran really poses no threat and, because the intel determined this, it's sat hidden for a year.

NOW, the day AFTER other national intelligence tells us Iran is in no position to do us or anyone else much damage for some years to come, what do the Bushies do?

Why, they scream louder that we need to attack Iran ... you know, before they attack us. Then, in a few years and several trillion dollars (not to mention untold numbers of lives lost, because Iran DOES have enough of a military to hurt us in ways Iraqis could not organize while we're being told that the U.S., perhaps with Israel, could go after Iran's so-called nuclear reactors which would kill millions of Iran citizens), Karl Rove can come out again, like he did this past weekend, and claim Congress made Bush do it.

I'm a pretty compassionate person. But when it comes to the Bushies, I'd take a page out of the great lyrics for "Sweeney Todd" (for a pacifist, this is my all time FAVORITE musical oddly enough), the fantastic musical turned into a Tim Burton film for Christmas release with Johnny Depp:

Never forget. Never forgive.

Think About Next Thanksgiving

When we approach Thanksgiving 2008, we _should_ already know who won the 2008 presidential race (but it's hard to exclude the possibility the Bushies will pull either a 2000 vote cheat/a 2001 "Rudy tells NY he must stay mayor after 9-11"/a Musharraf end-run around democratic vote this last month).

I suspect certain things will be true by then and while I'll tender some here, please keep in mind that what I predict does NOT mean what I necessarily want to have happen AND that I'd like to see what your predictions are for this time next year.

Mine:

* I don't think it's a given that the Democratic candidate WILL win the 2008 presidential race as much as some would like to believe it is; in fact, because we've allowed "fair election" policies to languish rather than get enacted, we've made it more likely there will be incredible shenanigans pulled in 2008

* IF a Dem wins, it will be Hillary - a choice that many Dems and Republicans will not embrace; if it's Hillary, we have ourselves to blame

* If a GOPeeuponus wins, it will be Rudy Giuliani, and that will be a disaster for the world as well as just us

* Before the 2008 race, we will be in a fight with Iran - whether it's full blown war which I expect it to be or not, it's still wrong

* A fight with Iran will make the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem like child's play; it will further bankrupt us financially and militarily and will ensure that those who want to hurt us have more free rein to do so because our resources will be committed in Iran

* Iran's Ahmadinejad was RIGHT about one thing this week: the American dollar is worth almost nothing; the longer the current GOP policies prevail, the worse our dollar will get and more and more and more Americans will suffer

* ALL of the bad inherent here CAN be changed if WE get involved and give as much passion and energy to changing events as we do to carping about what is wrong; NOTE this: it's critical - we can affect a change but only if we DO something more than complain and blog and slog

What say you?

This Veterans Day

I think it's important to consider that IF Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney truly respected our American service men and women, many of them now vets, than they would NOT be talking about another bloody, useless, war without end with Iran - worse than our endless wars with Iraq and Afghanistan rolled together.

Instead, it's telling just to remember how hard Bush fought to keep from fighting in Vietnam while Dick Cheney, speaking of this time and his many evasions of the draft: "I had other priorities."

Not Just Iraq: U.S. Also Marks Deadliest Year In Afghanistan

Not only does the Bush-led campaign in Iraq result in more U.S. and coalition deaths than ever in 2007 despite all the happy horseshit about the "grand success" of the "surge" to kill the insurgency; no, Bush has something else to boast about (and he's enough of an ass to do so, too): this is our deadliest year for American troops in Afghanistan (remember them?) since we invaded in early October 2001.

And this distinction was earned BEFORE Pakistan fell apart to prop up Musharraf's ego; with the chaos there now, one must assume that Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and friends have more room to manuever than ever. And each day, the Bushies push harder and harder for war with Iran, a country where we can't even begin to claim it will be a "cakewalk" to wage war.

The Bush Administration: fucking the world over since January 2001.

As Bush's Empire "Rises", Ours Falls Drastically

Positive you don't want to impeach this entire Bush Administration?

Everytime he opens his mouth about Iran, the crude oil price per barrel skyrockets and his "economic" genius has created what is arguably a much worse set of financial circumstances for many Americans than what happened during in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and the coming of the great depression. 439 days more is an AWFULLY long time.

From The New York Times:

Stock markets plummeted and the dollar sank to as investors grew skittish over rising oil prices and the prospect of a substantial U.S. economic slowdown.

Cheney Impeachment Resolution And War With Iran

I also posted this at All Things Democrat but...

From Ramsey Clark, an appeal to action in advance of plans against war with Iran and acknowledging that Rep. - and Democratic presidential candidate - Dennis Kucinich’s priority resolution to be presented on the floor tomorrow (Tuesday, November 5th) calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. Read the rest of this letter from Clark here.

President George Bush plans to attack Iran. From coast to coast, the people of this country are demanding impeachment, which may be the only way to stop him. We are acting now because a failure to impeach Bush with Vice President Cheney and other civil officers for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity may condemn the world to war without end. Has he not made it clear that he intends to attack Iran?

Again and again he has threatened Iran with attack if it does not abandon its nuclear program and act to please him. The threat, like the use of force against a nation, is a violation of Article 2.4 of the Charter of the United Nations just as the threat of assault, like assault itself, is a crime in all legal systems. President Bush has unilaterally imposed the most comprehensive economic sanctions within his power against Iran, excepting of course the purchase of Iranian oil. Sanctions are crueler than the colonial whipping post because they harm infants, children, the elderly and the infirm.

When President Bush decides to launch missiles at Iran, he will proclaim the ecessity for his action to prevent nuclear terrorism, and save freedom and democracy. “This government does not torture people,” President Bush assures us despite Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, rendition, the staunch defense of torture by his legal advisers throughout his Presidency and what We the People know, as he knows we know. We are being told that truth is what the Decider says it is. As with Iraq before, he now says Iran is a nuclear threat to the U.S. and brooks no dispute of his decision.

Failure to act will place the United States and much of the rest of the world in great danger of spreading war and violence resulting from a direct attack ordered by President Bush against Iran, retaliation by Iran and the fueling of existing tensions and conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region.

Just Who Is The Terrorist?

Since last week's vote on Capitol Hill pronouncing Iran's military as a terrorist organization (trust me, I have no love lost for most of the last however many leaders of Iran but, as the Christian Science Monitor opined shortly after September 11th, 2001, "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter") adding more and more drums toward the steady Bush-Cheney beat toward a full blown war with THAT country as well, I can just about imagine how well it would play if other countries labeled Bush and "our" Pentagon as terrorist organizations.

Certainly, I think that even within our own nation, there is widespread concensus that Bush-Cheney and all their evil elves have functioned as not just enemies of "the state" we hold dear (as in free speech, democracy, their war on the middle/working class, non-stop lies to engage in more dirty tricks and torture and war, to name a scant few. Yet can you imagine the outrage and the "right"eously angry shaking jowls of the likes of a Fred Thompson, a Trent Lott, and a Dick Cheney if another country labeled them as terrorists?

The longer we allow this evil empire to continue making misery and mayhem wherever it goes (some of which "grow" right here at home), the more we in effect empower our terrorists to wreak havoc on others. Nor am I sure that it is in anyway prudent to allow Bush and Cheney to sit there, orchestrating global oppression for the 450-460 days left to run of their term.

In other words, there is really not much we can - or even should - do about Iran and its military. Yet, here at home, we have a huge obligation to stop this continuing seven year nightmare and eliminate our own homegrown terrorists like Dubya, The Dick, the Blackwater honchos. Time we acted, too.

Bush and Iran: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid But STOP Him

Insane and megalomaniacal simply do not begin to describe Bush anymore.

Our military is broken, our coffers are empty, and yet the Bushies say Iran is not just in their sights, but a definite strike zone.

Support our troops in the best way possible: demand treason charges be leveled against the Bush Administration not next week, not next month. NOW.

Bush Retains Deep Burrowing Bug Up His Butt

[On Saturday morning, as CNN ran the breaking news headline for hours saying they were awaiting news of Bush coming out of his colonoscopy, I was still woozy from a lack of caffeine. Thus, when they showed video - while that banner headline ran - of a bust of more than 30 pounds of marijuana found in the trunk of a car driven by a teenager, I slapped my head and thought, "Geez. Is THAT what he's had buried up there all this time? You'd think if it was pot, he wouldn't have been such a paranoid, perverse, and antagonistic little prick!" Turns out, these were two separate stories.]

On Friday night or so, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann joked that President Bush had to rush to sign the "new" anti-torture legislation bill (one meant to "clarify", as if it was anyone but the Bushies who needed such clarification, the rules against torture during interrogation laid out by the Geneva Convention) into effect before he "handed over" temporary control of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney while he underwent general anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy Saturday morning, just in case The Dick got any "funny" ideas.

There were also more than a few jokes running around (not exactly the ha-ha variety given what these chickenhawks are willing to do when someone else is in the line of fire) that we should pray like hell that Cheney didn't decide to use his few hours as commander-in-cheat to declare full scale war on Iran.

The sad news? Well, it's pretty damned clear that Bush's colonoscopy failed to dislodge the very deep, dangerous, and dum-bulbafying bug he's had buried up his sigmoid (one of the lovely stretches of intestine we call the colon) for at least the last seven years. Also, according to the president's doctors, they found no brain wedged up there, finally putting an end to the theory that this is where Bush has had his mind buried all this time.

Paul Krugman: "All The President's Enablers"

Like Krugman, I couldn't care less if Bush is "certain" and "confident" we'll defeat Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda because Bush was just as confident about the ease of the Iraq war, how fast he would find Osama bin Laden, and how the world would love our War on Terror, areas in which he failed light years beyond miserably. Read the rest here:

In a coordinated public relations offensive, the White House is using reliably friendly pundits — amazingly, they still exist — to put out the word that President Bush is as upbeat and confident as ever. It might even be true.

What I don’t understand is why we’re supposed to consider Mr. Bush’s continuing confidence a good thing.

Remember, Mr. Bush was confident six years ago when he promised to bring in Osama, dead or alive. He was confident four years ago, when he told the insurgents to bring it on. He was confident two years ago, when he told Brownie that he was doing a heckuva job.

Now Iraq is a bloody quagmire, Afghanistan is deteriorating and the Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate admits, in effect, that thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with Al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident.

Sorry, but that’s not reassuring; it’s terrifying. It doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character; it shows that he has lost touch with reality.

Actually, it’s not clear that he ever was in touch with reality. I wrote about the Bush administration’s “infallibility complex,” its inability to admit mistakes or face up to real problems it didn’t want to deal with, in June 2002. Around the same time Ron Suskind, the investigative journalist, had a conversation with a senior Bush adviser who mocked the “reality-based community,” asserting that “when we act, we create our own reality.”

People who worried that the administration was living in a fantasy world used to be dismissed as victims of “Bush derangement syndrome,” liberals driven mad by Mr. Bush’s success. Now, however, it’s a syndrome that has spread even to former loyal Bushies.

Yet while Mr. Bush no longer has many true believers, he still has plenty of enablers — people who understand the folly of his actions, but refuse to do anything to stop him.

Pottersville delivers the rest (say "hi" to JurassicPork for me).

Nicholas D. Kristof: "Cheney's Long-Lost Twin"

That there can be even one Cheney has cost many meals and countless times worshipping the porcelain goddess" after reading about the Bushies' latest atrocities; the idea, as Kristoff proposes in this Times OpEd column, he may have a twin is beyond frightening (read it all here):

Could Dick Cheney and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be twins separated at birth?

The U.S. vice president and Iranian president, each the No. 2 in his country, certainly seem to be working together to create conflict between the two nations. Theirs may be the oddest and perhaps most dangerous partnership in the world today.

Both men are hawks who defy the international community, scorn the U.N. and are unpopular at home because of incompetence and recklessness — and each finds justification in the extremism of the other.

“Iranians refer to their new political radicals as ‘neoconservatives,’ with multiple layers of deliberate irony,” notes Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University, adding: “The hotheads around President Ahmadinejad’s office and the U.S. foreign policy radicals who cluster around Vice President Cheney’s office, listen to each other, cite each others’ statements and goad each other to new excesses on either side.”

So one of the perils in the final 18 months of the Bush administration is that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad will escalate provocations, ending up with airstrikes by the U.S. against Iranian nuclear sites.

Already we’re seeing a series of leaks about Iran that echo leaks in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The reports say that Iran is turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda, is using Hezbollah to wage a proxy war against U.S. forces in Iraq, is transferring bomb-making skills to Iraq insurgents and is handing out armor-piercing bullets to fighters in Iran and Afghanistan so as to kill more Americans.

Yet the jingoists aren’t all in our government: These leaks may well all be accurate, for Mr. Ahmadinejad is a perfect match for Mr. Cheney in his hawkishness and contempt for the international community.

It’s worrying that Iran has just recalled its most able diplomat — Javad Zarif, ambassador to the U.N. — and sent him out to pasture as an academic. Hard-liners always hated Mr. Zarif; goons from a mysterious Iranian security agency detained me on my last trip to Tehran and accused me of being a C.I.A. or Mossad spy, apparently because they were trying to get dirt to use against Mr. Zarif (who had given me my visa).

[...]A recent opinion poll in Iran found that 70 percent of Iranians want to normalize relations with the U.S., and 61 percent oppose the current Iranian system of government. Any visitor to Iran knows that it is — at a people-to-people level — the most pro-American Muslim country in the region, and the regime is as out of touch and moribund as the shah’s was in the late 1970s.

The ayatollahs’ only hope is that we will rescue them with a military strike, which would cement them in place for many years to come. But look out, because that’s what may happen if bilateral relations are driven by those jingoistic twins, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ahmadinejad.

JP at Pottersville offers more.

Maureen Dowd: "Hey, W! Bin Laden (Still) Determined To Strike In U.S."

Maureen lays it on the line, most ably (find the rest here at Pottersville):

Oh, as it turns out, they’re not on the run.

And, oh yeah, they can fight us here even if we fight them there.

And oh, one more thing, after spending hundreds of billions and losing all those lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re more vulnerable to terrorists than ever.

And, um, you know that Dead-or-Alive stuff? We may be the ones who end up dead.

Squirming White House officials had to confront the fact yesterday that everything President Bush has been spouting the last six years about Al Qaeda being on the run, disrupted and weakened was just guff.

Last year, W. called his “personal friend” Gen. Pervez Musharraf “a strong defender of freedom.” Unfortunately, it turned out to be Al Qaeda’s freedom. The White House is pinning the blame on Pervez.

While the administration lavishes billions on Pakistan, including $750 million in a risible attempt to win “hearts and minds” in tribal areas where Al Qaeda leaders are hiding and training, President Musharraf has helped create a quiet mountain retreat, a veritable terrorism spa, for Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri to refresh themselves and get back in shape.

The administration’s most thorough intelligence assessment since 9/11 is stark and dark. Two pages add up to one message: The Bushies blew it. Al Qaeda has exploded into a worldwide state of mind. Because of what’s going on with Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah may now “be more likely to consider” attacking us. Al Qaeda will try to “put operatives here” — (some news reports say a cell from Pakistan already is en route or has arrived) — and “acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material in attacks.”

(Democrats on cots are ineffectual, but Al Qaeda in caves gets the job done?)

After 9/11, W. stopped mentioning Osama’s name, calling him “just a person who’s now been marginalized,” and adding “I just don’t spend that much time on him.”

This week, as counterterrorism officials gathered at the White House to frantically brainstorm on covert and overt plans to capture Osama, the president may have regretted his perverse attempt to demote America’s most determined enemy.

W. began to mention Osama and Al Qaeda more recently, but only to assert: “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.” His conflation is contradicted by the fact that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, as the Sunni terrorist group in Iraq is known, did not exist before 9/11.

Fran Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, did her best to put a gloss on the dross but failed. She had to admit that the hands-off approach used by Mr. Musharraf with the tribal leaders in North Waziristan, which always looked like a nutty way to give Al Qaeda room to regroup, was a nutty way to give Al Qaeda room to regroup.

[...]W. swaggers about with his cowboy boots and gunslinger stance. But when talking about Waziristan last February, he explained that it was hard to round up the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders there because: “This is wild country; this is wilder than the Wild West.”

Yes, they shoot with real bullets up there, and they fly into buildings with real planes.

If W. were a real cowboy, instead of somebody who just plays one on TV, he would have cleaned up Dodge by now.

The rest is here.

Chertoff Gets Gas; America Foots "Security" Bill

So we went from Tom Ridge as secretary of Homeland Security spending billions to come up with a color-coded (and it was miscoded, actually) terror alert system that was held together with duct tape and chutzpah to Michael (Legion of Satan) Chertoff now putting us on alert because he has a "gut feeling" we're in for fresh terrorist attacks.

Yes, his gut feeling is that:

a) Bush wants to keep terrorizing the rest of the world and doesn't want to be told NO;
b) Bush wants to invade Iran now;
c) even rigged Republican-owned voting machines might not win the Repugs the 2008 presidential vote